Okay, a brief check-in of the latest patch, found this one...
BUG: Daunting Light not generating AP
While testing on combat dummies (and making sure I was in combat when I fired the power off), I discovered that Daunting Light does not generate any AP in Normal, Divine, or Empowered modes.
I also noticed that Divine encounter powers do not generate AP in general. While I can understand that, since we can fire three of them off in fairly rapid succession, this would be a way to overpower AP generation, we should at least get SOME measure of AP for it, even if it is one-third (three pips) or even one-sixth (three pips and accounting for double divinity gain) the usual amount.
AP generation feels a little more sluggish in general. That may be my imagination, though, and possibly due to me being used to divine powers generating AP. Is anyone else getting the same sense?
In regards to healing, I see many clerics saying that they feel healing was reduced, but our internal testing shows clerics providing more consistent healing to groups in tougher content (where players are at appropriate GS for the content that is).
Have clerics who have been running dungeons and group content noticed a healing deficit? Would it help if we scheduled another play with the devs event to run some dungeons at appropriate gear score to see how healing shakes out there? On the flip side, what paragon feats would healing clerics like to see improved in the new system?
As a related side note, we are currently taking a look at cleric Dodge and its stamina cost, although we have not made a final decision on it yet.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Spreadsheets and metrics are useful but they're just an indicator and never explain why. So why will you heal more with the new cleric on preview? Because good skills like astral shield, which was healing and giving extra damage resistance, take too long to cast at the "live" level. I've made the maths, if you want to get a similar astral shield on preview you need at least two stacks of empowerment.
Now let me address one thing first: Empowerment is the new divinity. I don't remember where you said it but you said that on the live server you felt that non divine mode spells were not worth casting them. But what did you do? Instead of making divine mode the normal mode if we sticked to that logic, you've made the normal version of some of the best cleric spells worse than they were while adding all the good stuff to empowerment, which means we're all going to crave for empowerment stacks. Doing some mitigation and debuffs as a faithful clerics is going to be horribly difficult because we're going to have to look for max empowerment stacks. Healing as righteous will be extremely hard to achieve.
So yes you killed hybrid builds. That's why you're healing more. Clerics don't help to kill stuff faster anymore unless they're righteous, mitigation mostly moved to virtuous. More incoming damage + stuff takes longer to kill = more healing. That's mechanical. That doesn't mean it's *good*. The only added-value clerics had was the ability to cover several niche roles with one character. Now tanks are better buffers even if they will do less damage. SWs will be far better healers and clerics doing healing can't even compete with extra mitigation or some okay damage buffs.
Of course with max empowerment you have to deal with the fact that it's extremely slow to build which means you're useless until you get your 2-3 stacks, because, guess what? Empowerment - the new divinity - stacks expire! Okay so we can't plan ahead anymore.
Everything is also a lot slower. Even if it requires a lot more clicks per second, the cleric isn't dynamic anymore. It's painfully slow. To get the full benefits from my build on live all I have to do is: Sunburst, tab, astral shield, tab, divine glow (divine or not depending on available resources). Then i'm using astral seal while everything is on CD. In 2-3s my team gets the full benefits and that's a ton of healing, strong damage buffs and extra damage resistance. With the preview cleric this is impossible to do. You have to use at-wills, underpowered and slow to cast divine mode spells to get the spell to its current live efficiency. On live the cleric gameplay is dynamic and brutal, on preview, well, not anymore.
So of course you're healing for a bit more. Because that's all you're doing. While specializing dps classes might seem like an interesting idea to provide different gameplay options, specializing support classes will suddenly make them not welcome because other people don't want to take 2-3 support characters in 5 people content. If the game was all about 10+ people content then the changes would be great (seriously) because there would be room for a dedicated buffer, a dedicated healer and a dedicated dmg mitigation guy but in 5 people content there is only one support slot and you have to do support well.
The lack of AoE effect on many support spells (which aren't healing ones) also kinda kills them in non pvp content. A damage debuff on ONE guy, seriously? That's break the spirit. Going through a horribly long animation to get 5% less damage on a handful of npcs? That's divine mode divine glow. This is a joke I guess. In one click with my CW i can wipe all low hitpoints minions or stun them for a few seconds, at the very least. Which means well, 100% less damage taken. That's a serious team asset. And my cleric, well, what do I have to show for the slot I take in the same time frame? 5% less damage from these guys. Or 10% less from one NPC. LOL.
Slightly better healers yes but worse characters in general. So yeah I'm sorry but you've just made the class unnecessarily harder to play for lesser benefits. It's great for solo content but in a team the cleric will be like tanks at launch if they don't use a full damage/buffs build. Because it takes too long to get to the desired empowerment level while divine mode spells are really meh with a couple of exceptions (chains and bastion of health now). So... Lack of good aoe support spells, less versatility, a slower gameplay with more clicks to do for lesser results if you're not doing dps... My cleric is about to lose all of his mojo!
So what do I want in the new trees? Debuffs, healing and mitigation in all of them! Different flavours of course but all 3 trees should cover the three support roles. Because support characters have to be hybrid to be desired. And stuff happening a lot faster. Any rotation taking longer than 2-3s to get 90% of what a character has to offer is bs given what the game is.
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blazious11Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 331Arc User
edited November 2014
Absolutely right Diogene!
More: Yes, you heal more, because the party take more damage. Just the AS nerf takes away 20% mitigation, that's 20% more healing the party needs.
One of the reasons that SW temp heals more in mod4, because they do not give bonus mitigation for party. (and they heal faster)
Also, I really miss Rising Hope feat.
My story is truly a grand tale! Of course, any story about me is going to be grand simply by virtue of the main character.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Because support characters have to be hybrid to be desired.
But it has already been stated that "hybridization" is considered a problem. That premise, combined with totally ignoring what most DC players (apart from the PvPers) were asking for resulted in this....well, what we got.
The fundamental idea behing the DC redesign is to make the DCs better at some single thing...at the cost of making hybrid builds much less feasible and weaker than before.
Quite frankly, I see no reason why anyone should want to bring a DC along for 5-man skirmishes and dungeons after mod 5 goes live.
They pretty much remain the same as before.Key ones beings Shield of the divine and Agent of the divine not triggering on allies and Divine Healing word not always granting tempHp.There's also a few "minor" bugs where the numbers are a bit off compared to what they should be.Please refer to my "Update 3" post for the full list,in case they haven't been noted.
Edit: Confirmed eiagra's post that daunting light does not generate AP.
Feedback: Divinity Generation
While I think the original value was too slow and made combat too static,the current divinity generation is a bit too much.I can literally cast divine encounters after every at will.A single Blessings of Battle actually grants me 1 full pip plus about 25% of a second pip with Divine fortune.That almost defeats the purpose of building divinity.(Extra cheesy when combined with Divine break the spirit.Stuns,stuns everywhere!) I guess the sweet-spot would be a boost of 33-50% on the original,instead of 100%.That would mean you can cast a divine encounter after every other at-will,which sounds ideal taking under consideration the baseline ratio of at wills to encounters.
By the way,without responding to anyone in specific,I would like to give a few...."reminders":
-Soothing light has not changed.It still doesn't require a target to cast,you can cast it on yourself.The last update was to SEARING light,the encounter power.It added healing to it.
-Astral shield did not lose DR.On live it grants 24% DR.On preview it adds 30% DR.So,Normal version was buffed,if anything.This has been true for a couple of updates now.
-Cleanse does not have a 20 second ICD....It is 8 seconds.
While I think the original value was too slow and made combat too static,the current divinity generation is a bit too much.I can literally cast divine encounters after every at will.A single Blessings of Battle actually grants me 1 full pip plus about 25% of a second pip with Divine fortune.That almost defeats the purpose of building divinity .
Consider the Empowered is the new Divine Mode.. Do not compare the new divine mode with the current Divine mode. Because they serve totally different purpose.
Looking @ diogene's calculation.. Assuming that 2x Empowered is equal to 1 pip of the current Divine.. can you cast 2x Empowered 3 Times @ ptr as fast as we cast 3 pips of divine in live?
I was just scanning the leaderboards when I sorted by #of kills. I counted 200 pages. Here is what I found:
11 clerics out of 4000 players. That is 0.275%. There are more mages on page one (the top 20) than there are clerics in the top 4000! There is one player that has nearly twice the kills of all the clerics in the top 4000 eligible clerics combined.
Sometimes, numbers don't express in human relatable terms their meaning, so I am going to express this in a unitary way.
There are 7 classes, so in a perfectly balanced game the ratio for each class would be 1 in 7: ./.......
for mages right now, it is a little bit better than this, but guardian fighters are greatly under-represented in neverwinter pvp, they show up maybe 1 in 15 or so:
./...............
Maybe thats ok. But here is cleric, 1 in 363: ./...............................................
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This is conservative way to measure too: the actual ratio of total kills is muchworse.
The question for the you is this: why should this be? Is there really any way to rationalize this? Do you think this objectively measured imbalance should be addressed? If not, why not? If so, well I am just going to say that in my personal opinion, the current changes are very very far from achieving a fair balance: there is something fundamentally misguided in the philosophy of clerics in pvp. Did someone get touched by a priest or something? Why do they have to be only punching bags?
Diogene got it right. That is the basis with everything on why I said I am not pleased with the way the cleric works. Any sort of hybridization is gutted and everything just runs slower and gets to max efficient slower, and general powers are essentially weaker than how they are on live. Everything that made the cleric work on live has been decreased or removed altogether.
Bug Report : Feat Interaction = Burning Guidance + Astral Seal There is something funny that will happen when we cast Astral Seal if we have Burning Guidance boon. I have it produced while having the faithful tree... The insane damage procced from Astral Seal + Burning Guidance mostly. Righteous spec may or may not boost the dmg, but I believe the root bug stems from feat interaction... If we spam Astral Seal multiple times to different targets while having at least 2 person near the DC (for Burning Guidance to activate), the bug will occur... During the bug, there will be many dmg floaters ever increasing both in procs & damage amount that it causes your PC to freeze
Consider the Empowered is the new Divine Mode.. Do not compare the new divine mode with the current Divine mode. Because they serve totally different purpose.
(Warning:This post contains feedback on what I feel the divinity gains should be, based on playing with the current divinity as well as theorycrafting. Feel free to skip if you are not interested.)
Actually,Im not comparing live's Divine Mode with Mimic's Divine Mode.You also can't compare live's Divine Mode with Mimic's Empowered Mode though.The correct comparison is class mechanic vs class mechanic.So,Effects added by divine mode on live vs Effects added by Divine mode on Mimic + Effects added by the generated stack of empowerment to the next encounter you use.With that in mind,comparing the benefit gained by expending 1 pip of divinity:
Live
Let's say you use Divine Divine glow.What this will add is:
Damage: ~1500 (this refers exclusively to the damage increase the divine version benefits from,compared to the normal one,not the overall damage of the encounter)
Healing: 0
Offensive boost: 15 %
Defensive boost: 0
Additional bonuses: None
Now,this empowered stack provides flexibility,as you can use it on any encounter you want,to increase your own damage,your party's damage,to heal,to provide mitigation etc.In order to stay along the lines of benefits from Live's divine glow,let's assume we choose to expend this stack on break the spirit.Empowered break the spirit adds 10% damage to all party members per stack.Since we have 1 stack,that's 10% damage.This means that,adding this boost to the original 5% from divine divine glow nets us 1.1*1.05=1.155 or 15.5% damage boost.So overall benefit from 1 pip:
In other words,1 pip on live = 1 pip on Mimic (or rather,mimic's is stronger,but that's due to flexibility).
Because the "potency" of each pip remains the same,the rate of divinity generation should also be the same on Mimic as on live. Since encounter powers were the main divinity generator before,new at wills should,in theory,provide the same amount encounters did in the past,if not a bit more since old at wills were also generating a bit divinity,while new encounters now generate none.So we would get roughly 35-40% of a pip per cast,for an average at will such as astral seal.However,there's one disadvantage to the new system and that is all the extra button tapping.In order to use 3 pips for example,you would need:
In other words,the additional taps required reduce the time available to use at-wills and that should be factored in,in divinity gains.Because of that,the "35-40% of a pip" divinity gains we started with, should be boosted by roughly 8/5 or 1.6 to offset the additional time spent on encounters.As a result,we should be getting around 56-64% of a pip per cast.This would allow us to use a divine encounter every other at-will,which also "feels" right,based on the time I have spent on Mimic.Divine encounters used at the same rate as at wills just doesn't quite do it for me,it's too much.
Again,this is just my opinion,it doesn't mean I'm right.There's way too many things to take under consideration,so my theory could be well off.It does however favor the 1 divine encounter for 2 at wills point I made,so...Im going with this for now :P
Looking @ diogene's calculation.. Assuming that 2x Empowered is equal to 1 pip of the current Divine.. can you cast 2x Empowered 3 Times @ ptr as fast as we cast 3 pips of divine in live?
Thing is,you can't directly compare divine astral shield on live and empowered astral shield +1 divine encounter on mimic,because they work differently.On live,divine AS is a power that behaves the same under all circumstances.It will heal the same amount,at the same frequency.Empowered AS behaves differently though.It works MUCH better against multiple,small hits,but worse against fewer,large hits.
-If you get hit 10 times for 2.5k,you will lose 25k hp.
Live's version will heal 9-12k (depending on your healing) of that,leaving your allies missing around 15k hp .
Mimic's version with 1 Empowered stack with the stack being the result of,say,a divine healing word for extra tempHp,will absorb almost all that damage and leave your allies with about 2k missing hp.
-On the other hand,if the 25k hp loss is the result of one big hit from a boss,live's AS will still heal that ~10k hp,while Mimic's AS will barely absorb anything,leaving your allies missing over 20k hp.This is why in such a situation,you would adjust your divinity consumption in a way so that the divine encounters,combined with empowered encounters can provide enough protection from slow,hard hits,rather than a bunch of minor ones.
-Finally,if you put down a divine AS on live and noone gets hurt because everything dies before they can reach you,you just wasted a pip on live for nothing,while on Mimic,if you used it for something useful,you wouldnt waste it.
This is the main advantage of the new cleric,flexibility.If you try to play with the old mindset of "Ok,I'll do my rotation again" you will be ineffective.You need to adjust your casts to counter the specific situation you are in.You should be re-evaluating the battle before every rotation and react accordingly. This is also why I think DCs can still be hybrids.Except,this is no longer the result of feats,it's the result of your powers selection and divinity and Empowered stacks management.
The cast times on *most* DC encounters are extraordinarily high. This creates enormous breaks in combat when you not only have to switch in and out of divinity (which obviously takes time between tabbing) but manage empowered stacks and Divinity levels. This combat fluidity is further exacerbated by aforementioned cast times. This is most seen in Daunting Light, Break the Spirit (especially the missile speed), Astral Shield, and Divine Searing Light. This problem of Combat fluidity is even worse by the slow at will speeds as noted by bvira
These animations need to be vastly sped up. There's no if's about it, they are downright slow. Divine Daunting Light is hurt by a 10% reduction on damage, and Empowered/Normal Daunting Light is incredibly hurt by the fact that the Area of Effect is small and the delay before it hits is astonishingly high. If anything, the Normal/Empowered Daunting Light should have a very, very slightly higher delay than say Indomitable Battle Strike considering the small area.
Prophecy of Doom is incredibly slow in all modes. This spell should be instant considering the damage is delayed for a period of time in Empowered/Normal casting. I can accept a small casting animation for Divine Mode as it causes instant damage, but it should really be 25%-50% of the current casting speed.
Searing Light is still going to be unused as it has poor damage and, again, the casting animation is not up to par compared to other damaging spells. Divine mode is horrendous in this regard while Empowered/Normal mode is still very lacking. I would suggest it having an equal speed to At Wills.
Lastly, if possible, Tabbing Divinity needs a much shorter lockout before using Divine/Normal abilities. This slight delay has become much more noticeable due to the current mechanics and at times feels like an extra hindrance.
Rework Heroic Feats
DC Heroic feats need some incredible attention. I suggest taking placing healing step within the line of heroic feats as only 2 dodges is becoming a burden in PvP and many PvE instances when having to dodge multiple AoE's. The rest of them need serious attention as the rewards they provide are paltry. A good example is Templar's Domain that provides 30% more Armor Penetration for 5 seconds once every 5 mins. Consider changing this to 20% with constant uptime. Numerous other feats are both sadly and hilariously underpowered.
These still need to be worked on. Some of them are as easy as Copy/pasting current feats such as healing step and such, the others merely require editing simple values in the code. PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE THIS AS WE WOULD RATE THIS AS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY THAN ANYTHING ELSE.
Divine At-Wills and Divinity
With the current design of Empowered Stacks, the Divine at-wills are currently the most useless things in the entire class. They have the worst scaling of all cleric abilities and using them literally prevents your ability to play to full potential as they actively hinder acquiring empowered stacks. Please, DO NOT IGNORE THIS. If anything, these should *also*be used to build Divinity as the damage and healing they provide pales in comparison to Encounters.
This still needs to be looked at. Although Divinity gain is much more manageable this current patch, these Divine at-wills still leave much to be desired, especially since Divine Spells have no cooldown. I again suggest that these be allowed to be used to gain divinity, but at a 25-50% rate compared to normal at wills for balancing purposes. This would allow us the option for spot healing and minor damage, at the cost of a much slower divinity gain and delaying Divine/Empowered stack building and usage. I feel this would help streamline the class as a whole.
Show Cooldown Timers for Normal Encounters While in Divine Mode
A Quality of Life change. The Divine abilities need to show a Cooldown timer for the Normal/Empowered Abilities. I find it very life-threatening to try to juggle Divine abilities and Empowered abilities. There have been numerous times I've attempted an Empowered ability only to find that it is still on Cooldown, and I have little knowledge of the fact because I was using Divine mode.
After testing, I think my main concern is casting times. They're way too slow. I could deal with Empowerment, I could deal with changing my powers around, I could deal with everything else... if I didn't feel SO SLOW. (This also applies to the dodge. SO. SLOW. Would appreciate a third slide.)
Divine Glow: WAY too slow casting time. In Divine mode, the whole point of no cooldowns is to enable us to get empowered and get on with what we're doing, from what I understand. However, if you want to cast 3 divine DGs in a row, it takes so long it's not even worth it. Very disappointing.
Prophecy of Doom: Always been slow, always been pretty disappointing. Considering this is a paragon skill (and especially since you consider that Exaltation is the counterpart - a good clutch heal with some immunity), I always thought that this animation should be sped up or to give some immunity while you're standing there prophesying. Right?
Astral Shield: Slow animation as well, but maybe I'm just used to it. I always thought that people rely too much on blue circle, but I am a little disappointed with the new version. At least it still has mitigation! It also needs to be wayyy more clearly marked where you're laying it down, because if noone can see it, they can't use it.
Sunburst: Don't like it. Added KB to normal version, removed KB from divine version... Unnecessary IMO. Why not keep the normal and divine versions of sunburst, but add the HoT/DoT to the empowered one? There was no reason to change this, and it seems like the ONLY people who are happy about this are PvP only. I'd also be quite pleased with a stun/daze instead of KB, which works in PvE as well as PvP, and nobody will accuse devs of picking one over the other.
Searing Light: I'm actually really pleased with this. I always liked it, in theory, but it was situational and not really worth it most of the time. Now I think this can be the new Sunburst, a little AoE damage and heal. I'd like it even better if the animation was clearer about who you're hitting with it.
Capstone feats: I like them. I feel more powerful and I feel like I'm healing very well. I'm DEFINITELY healing myself better, which was always a big disappointment (my CW heals herself with lifesteal better than my cleric can with heals).
Divinity gain: I'm okay with only at-wills giving divinity how it is now. At first it was too slow, since Empowerment is the GOAL, you need to make sure you're not limited by Divinity.
I agree with Diogene... everything is painfully slow. You have to use divinity and you have to hit twice as many buttons as you used to. I play a cleric because I don't like button smashers. I like thinking about what I'm doing and knowing I'm making a difference... Empowerment is clunky and wasn't what we asked for. What would have been nice? More AoEs, but you took away a beloved power, Forgemaster's Flame. Now we can't have a decent amount of damage and a heal. We can't buff our parties as well as we used to be able to, since there's no Rising Hope or Linked Spirit, with Divine Glow changed to be not as powerful.
The fact that I need to use 3 rotations (normal, divine, empowered) to utilize my skills... speaks volumes. CWs have a whole extra encounter, GWFs go Hulk, and I get to learn three different versions of every skill, and I need to use them all in order to really make a difference.
Overall impression: Eh. I'll keep playing. \o/ It's a game.
FeedBack: I have to say the divinity just had a terrible kick in the pants and to tell you the truth players will hate that, if you replaced Agent of the Divine with a Feat that gave you that fourth pip and divinity gain from offensive encounters nearly everyone would go for that instead.
Time will tell if this is just one big unintentional nerf.
So after a little more testing I still don't like the changes.
At some point if you want to make the DC gameplay as fast as it is on live you're going to have to reduce casting time dramatically, but then we're going to run into major pvp balance issues, and the DC will play like a Street fighter II character. Not that I dislike this game but I don't see many people enjoying clickfests. Or you're going to make divinity mode spells significantly powerful but not strong enough to make empowerment seen as a nice side-effect - or you're going to buff these spells significantly and add cooldowns, but then the DC will be what rangers used to be, and many HR players didn't enjoy having to switch stances all the time.
So there's no solution without reverting some changes while keeping some of the good stuff:
- revert the divinity changes and keep what's on the live server: basically, better versions of normal spells with a shared CD. That's easy to track, you don't have to click 15 times a second to get to the desired effect, it's an instant effect and frankly well balanced on live.
- but: keep the empowerment mechanics. Change some of them, make them a nice small bonus. You keep empowerment, that's a small buff, your boss is happy because you didn't make engineers work for weeks on something we don't enjoy (yes that's important too ).
- keep the new feat trees but make them more hybrid. Add a bit of healing to righteous and some dmg buffs to virtuous and faithful.
That means reworking some spells and empowerment effects and adding some empowerment bonuses to divine mode but IMO that would be a much better compromise. If you do this please don't change divine astral shield and normal divine glow, keep the live server design, they're good spells and they're why other people want clerics in their parties.
I just wanna say : i love your idea Diogene..
It's a pretty nice compromise so that their work up to this point will not be in vain.. but we get to keep the old divine style. [ Everybody wins !! ].
Yes, 15 clicks a second is a necessary exaggeration..
Conclusion, i dont believe zerging the keyboard or a clickfest will make players enjoy playing their characters more.
- but: keep the empowerment mechanics. Change some of them, make them a nice small bonus. You keep empowerment, that's a small buff, your boss is happy because you didn't make engineers work for weeks on something we don't enjoy (yes that's important too ).
Building on Diogene idea, empowerment stacks could be consumed by Divine At-Will. Each At-Will could have a different effect instead of just having the same Divine At-Will for all. When the number of orbs is zero, it could simply create one.
I feel on live that I don't use that much Divine At-Will. I presume it is going to be worse with the new mechanic having no CD on Divine Encounters.
I m playing pvp with my DC and divine power is really hard to get when constantly running to avoid being ganked because hey ! i m healer so kill healer first . Its gonna be a hell trying to at - will while dodging / kiting and not at all effective , we need more mobility crowd control and Single Target STRONG heals .
The way i see it , u are ruining the Dc class which was really fun up until now as it was and only needed some medium to small buffs on damage and single target healing , and maybe abit more crowd control duration especially on break their spirit .
The only single target heal that existed u change it to Aoe . Yes i m talking about healing word ,which needed buffing ofcourse (9 k heal empowered is a joke when hitpoints in pvp go from 30k -40 ) , but as single target spell because every aoe spell need to be weak in order not to be overpowered . That spell was the only spell that gave me the feeling i have something to keep track and manage in order to save someone from death ( always have spare divine power , and cast it with good targeting in order not to miss and well timed ).
We also need + damage on all our spells , and Prophecy of doom need to be Prophesy of DOOM not just one of the useless spells we have in our ability catalogue .Should give A good dps Dot on top of debuff and really good damage if the target ends up living ( its one of the longer cooldown spells we have so it should be one of the most strong)
We really need to Choose when sunburst will knockback some1 and when not , or remove knockback completely .
We need to build divine power while mooving
Healing word Need to go back to single target with way more healing output so we have a really strong heal to save some1 from death and at least give him back arround 10 k Hps non critical , or even more ( u could consider extending cooldown on it , so its balanced )
What i read makes me wanna drop all my healing spells retrain for strenght and go dps with Forgemaster and break their spirit and get at last the doublekills and triplekills u deny all healers from and get my 10/10 domination.
Instead of making a healer class that works u are turning dc to either a Hybrid dps/ heal or an even more aoe focused regeneration spammer .
Excuse me for the length of the post , but after much trials and errors i managed to make my Dc viable and fun in Pvp . and suddenly instead of tweaks u are trying to fix something that wasn't broken , just underpowered .
Shouldn't this say increased? Better yet, wouldn't increased be the wrong word to use there? "Improving casting speed to better facilitate the faster game play". Wouldn't reduced or a similar word fit better?
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited November 2014
Decreased. Context indicates he must have meant decreased.
Decreased. Context indicates he must have meant decreased.
The speed at which you activate powers has been increased. The casting times have been shortened. Those things are largely interchangeable as far as nomenclature goes.
TL;DR MORE POWERS FASTER GO!
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
Yeah, this is what I thought you meant on my first read and then the question started making me read it backwards (or as "casting time" rather than "casting speed") and I got vaguely confused.
The speed at which you activate powers has been increased. The casting times have been shortened. Those things are largely interchangeable as far as nomenclature goes.
TL;DR MORE POWERS FASTER GO!
Crush,
These changes look awesome! However with ALL the recent buffs to all classes, seems like we are back to PRE-Tenacity damage values (as a % of HP).
Would you PLEASE consider a quick re-visit to tenacity?
I would think that an easy avenue could be merely doubling the damage effect of tenacity.
BASE values would still be all -10% to damage,crit,control. Each 1% of tenacity stat (meaning around +100 tenacity for example) would provide -2% damage -1% crit damage and -1% Control (up from 1%/1%/1%).
At the end of the day, it would only REALLY be about an 8-10% decrease in damage across the board for MOST PVPERs, but I feel this is REALLY needed as damage values are crazy!
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited November 2014
Still want forgemaster's heal back. You give searing, an AoE, healing potential but remove healing from a single target. DCs are healers, what good is slowing something?
This sounds great! Should make gameplay more fluid,thank you for listening to our feedback
Are there going to be any other DC changes for this week's patch though? I know that you are busy with the updates to all the classes and that DCs have been getting big changes every week so far,so it's understandable to receive a bit less focus for once.However, there's quite a few bugs left and it would be nice to have them fixed by release.This is the second to last update and if they are all left for the last week,there's a chance they might make it to Live too...
Also,any news on the possible decrease to the stamina cost of our Dodge? Seems like we are gonna need it pretty badly... :P
- Replace/Rework all those pathetic feats (Domain Synergy, Templar's Domain, Initiate of Faith etc.)
- Put something stamina related (Healing Step)
2) Class Feature Rework
- Prophetic Action: very unreliable, close to useless atm
- Anointed holy Symbol: very little temp HP
- Soothe: no one uses it
- Holy Fervor: should include healing too
I hate to say it but if these changes go live I will be forced to quit my (main) DC. Even now with 16k GS i feel weak in solo content, but this makes me feel like a useless baggage in parties. Better to take some dps or SW to heal than me (and I am built to support).
- FF which is mostly used to heal the party during boss fights now does not heal (what is a single target slow good for a DC?! bosses cannot be slowed down anyway).
- gaining divinity with at-wills only? How many times I find myself running trying to build some divinity casting encounters ... well now I am forced to stand still spamming at-wills while I have no CC immunity and only two dodges. I will just kneel and pray to all the gods in the universe for a miraculous kill .
- sunburst... KB is just a party killer rly nobody usually wants KBs in party content
- now I will be forced to use BoH to feel a little like a healer (and I hate that skill)
- while I like the change in divine chains (3x cast) I do not like the shorter controll effect (divine mode should be stronger not weaker)
- please rework heroic feats... half of them are pretty much useless and you know it well
So I spent a week testing and a weekend running Tiamat, and this is my feedback.
Look, some of it will include some things that are brutally honest. I will ignore the squealing from other players.
Feedback: This is the world's biggest nerf. Nothing that you give me counters the loss of Linked Spirit. Being able to buff myself from 6k power to 8-11k power and then cast a daily or an encounter is not matched by anything done in the rework of feats. I could tolerate Empowered and everything else except for the loss of this party-based feat. This isn't a selfish thing since I get zero from it in solo play. But if I want to contribute anything meaning full in Endgame content and BIS set parties, Linked Spirit was the only way.
People tell me to be cheerful, because base damage has been increased. Okay, all those people should go watch BIS CW clear Draco solo. No new "Mod 5" cleric is going to be posting those videos, so now even BIS clerics can expect to be excluded from CN parties.
And getting over my tears (I have a CW), let's talk about who all these changes really hurt. The green level, starting their first character, DC players. Who will hit their first group content dungeon, Cloak Tower, with an Encounter they can't use. Because you don't have Divinity or Empowered at that point. The abuse that such players are likely to receive on their second day of content should make them quit the game. And if this game can't attract new players, it will die.
And this has to do with a lot of the changes that have been proposed. My current Endgame Cleric could survive anything but the loss of LS and maybe the Regen on AS. But I am a Founder and I ran content during Beta on level as both a CW and a DC. Which means green gear, no enchants, no Perfect Weapon Enchants, etc. Even using the cheapest gear on the AH you'd need hundreds of thousands of AD to run above content. This is Pirate King. FULL GREEN. A DOG COMPANION.
None of the reworks are going to keep me rolling a DC and out DPSing most other players with a Perfect and Rank 9s in PVE dungeons. Heck, my HR in an average level 40 pvp blue gear and Rank 9s triple out DPS everyone in full T1 gear and rank 5s in Idris. Not being able to hit Karrandax with a regen AS and not hitting CT with a non-KB Sunburst hurts NEW PLAYERS only. My level 15 character DCs will KILL with a single Sunburst.
So I am making a plea to revisit your ideas FOR THEIR SAKES ONLY.
Okay, on to what it all really changes. And that is the effect of DCs in PvP in below 60 content. It's a Dirty Little Secret that 95% of the people flaunting Dominion Champion Titles earned them below 60. Same way you used to earn Head Hunter. (Yes, Dear Reader, I OFC exclude YOU.) And Clerics who earn them do so using Punishing Light and Guardian of the Faith Daily. Seriously. And what does the all of the Divinity changes and the loss of gaining Divinity from Encounter CDs mean? It will be much, much harder to use Punishing Light below 60 to earn Triple Kills. Which only encourages GS creep against Green Newbies.
So I am at Point 1. A TR or a GW or a CW or a GF or a GWF is at the other end of the map. We charge to meet at Point 2. The enemy CW suffers no penalty. The enemy TR, GWF, or GF can expect full respective meters when the reach Point 2. I can't even spec to a potential and planned recharge based on Encounter CDs. I must luck roll. This is a PUNISHMENT for rolling a DC and going into PvP. Even in GG, it's a punishment.
And I like class differentiation. So if you don't want to revisit, a 2-slide DC, consider buffing HP instead to bring us towards the more armored classes and make casual PvP-ing easier.
And while we are on the subject of punishment, why have the DC trait lines have a cost to capstone v.s. every other class I run? You can have a better boost but it costs something? What? What?
You don't punish any other class that I can see by charging them a cost to cap their Feat Line. Though, TBH, my secret DC build (which I didn't publish following the complete nerf of my non-DPS GF) never took a Cap as it was. Though Agent of Faith was a 2 second CD reduction and gave me Sunburst at less than 7 seconds.
But as I have said, you annoy me. As a Whale, with a credit card, you irritate me. And I did refuse to pay once.
But if you can't continue to recruit new players, which is the secret of WOW. This game will die.
Suggestions: PvP players, hardcore or GG need a way to regenerate Divinty outside flagging people with Astral Seal. I've played GG since it started and let's be serious. You are PENALIZING new players only. Especially with the new "walls" in T1 and you know what I mean.
With the release of new Artifact weapons, please either UNBIND drops in VT or MC, or make them far more constant. My 15k GS characters who aren't CWs are having a hard time gearing because of these constraints. I have run MC since it release some 700-800 times and had 6 drops. 5 GF sheilds not on my GF and 1 CW off hand on my CLERIC. Considering the AD cost on the AH for components..."
Comments
BUG: Daunting Light not generating AP
While testing on combat dummies (and making sure I was in combat when I fired the power off), I discovered that Daunting Light does not generate any AP in Normal, Divine, or Empowered modes.
I also noticed that Divine encounter powers do not generate AP in general. While I can understand that, since we can fire three of them off in fairly rapid succession, this would be a way to overpower AP generation, we should at least get SOME measure of AP for it, even if it is one-third (three pips) or even one-sixth (three pips and accounting for double divinity gain) the usual amount.
AP generation feels a little more sluggish in general. That may be my imagination, though, and possibly due to me being used to divine powers generating AP. Is anyone else getting the same sense?
Spreadsheets and metrics are useful but they're just an indicator and never explain why. So why will you heal more with the new cleric on preview? Because good skills like astral shield, which was healing and giving extra damage resistance, take too long to cast at the "live" level. I've made the maths, if you want to get a similar astral shield on preview you need at least two stacks of empowerment.
Now let me address one thing first: Empowerment is the new divinity. I don't remember where you said it but you said that on the live server you felt that non divine mode spells were not worth casting them. But what did you do? Instead of making divine mode the normal mode if we sticked to that logic, you've made the normal version of some of the best cleric spells worse than they were while adding all the good stuff to empowerment, which means we're all going to crave for empowerment stacks. Doing some mitigation and debuffs as a faithful clerics is going to be horribly difficult because we're going to have to look for max empowerment stacks. Healing as righteous will be extremely hard to achieve.
So yes you killed hybrid builds. That's why you're healing more. Clerics don't help to kill stuff faster anymore unless they're righteous, mitigation mostly moved to virtuous. More incoming damage + stuff takes longer to kill = more healing. That's mechanical. That doesn't mean it's *good*. The only added-value clerics had was the ability to cover several niche roles with one character. Now tanks are better buffers even if they will do less damage. SWs will be far better healers and clerics doing healing can't even compete with extra mitigation or some okay damage buffs.
Of course with max empowerment you have to deal with the fact that it's extremely slow to build which means you're useless until you get your 2-3 stacks, because, guess what? Empowerment - the new divinity - stacks expire! Okay so we can't plan ahead anymore.
Everything is also a lot slower. Even if it requires a lot more clicks per second, the cleric isn't dynamic anymore. It's painfully slow. To get the full benefits from my build on live all I have to do is: Sunburst, tab, astral shield, tab, divine glow (divine or not depending on available resources). Then i'm using astral seal while everything is on CD. In 2-3s my team gets the full benefits and that's a ton of healing, strong damage buffs and extra damage resistance. With the preview cleric this is impossible to do. You have to use at-wills, underpowered and slow to cast divine mode spells to get the spell to its current live efficiency. On live the cleric gameplay is dynamic and brutal, on preview, well, not anymore.
So of course you're healing for a bit more. Because that's all you're doing. While specializing dps classes might seem like an interesting idea to provide different gameplay options, specializing support classes will suddenly make them not welcome because other people don't want to take 2-3 support characters in 5 people content. If the game was all about 10+ people content then the changes would be great (seriously) because there would be room for a dedicated buffer, a dedicated healer and a dedicated dmg mitigation guy but in 5 people content there is only one support slot and you have to do support well.
The lack of AoE effect on many support spells (which aren't healing ones) also kinda kills them in non pvp content. A damage debuff on ONE guy, seriously? That's break the spirit. Going through a horribly long animation to get 5% less damage on a handful of npcs? That's divine mode divine glow. This is a joke I guess. In one click with my CW i can wipe all low hitpoints minions or stun them for a few seconds, at the very least. Which means well, 100% less damage taken. That's a serious team asset. And my cleric, well, what do I have to show for the slot I take in the same time frame? 5% less damage from these guys. Or 10% less from one NPC. LOL.
Slightly better healers yes but worse characters in general. So yeah I'm sorry but you've just made the class unnecessarily harder to play for lesser benefits. It's great for solo content but in a team the cleric will be like tanks at launch if they don't use a full damage/buffs build. Because it takes too long to get to the desired empowerment level while divine mode spells are really meh with a couple of exceptions (chains and bastion of health now). So... Lack of good aoe support spells, less versatility, a slower gameplay with more clicks to do for lesser results if you're not doing dps... My cleric is about to lose all of his mojo!
So what do I want in the new trees? Debuffs, healing and mitigation in all of them! Different flavours of course but all 3 trees should cover the three support roles. Because support characters have to be hybrid to be desired. And stuff happening a lot faster. Any rotation taking longer than 2-3s to get 90% of what a character has to offer is bs given what the game is.
More: Yes, you heal more, because the party take more damage. Just the AS nerf takes away 20% mitigation, that's 20% more healing the party needs.
One of the reasons that SW temp heals more in mod4, because they do not give bonus mitigation for party. (and they heal faster)
Also, I really miss Rising Hope feat.
But it has already been stated that "hybridization" is considered a problem. That premise, combined with totally ignoring what most DC players (apart from the PvPers) were asking for resulted in this....well, what we got.
The fundamental idea behing the DC redesign is to make the DCs better at some single thing...at the cost of making hybrid builds much less feasible and weaker than before.
Quite frankly, I see no reason why anyone should want to bring a DC along for 5-man skirmishes and dungeons after mod 5 goes live.
Bugs
They pretty much remain the same as before.Key ones beings Shield of the divine and Agent of the divine not triggering on allies and Divine Healing word not always granting tempHp.There's also a few "minor" bugs where the numbers are a bit off compared to what they should be.Please refer to my "Update 3" post for the full list,in case they haven't been noted.
Edit: Confirmed eiagra's post that daunting light does not generate AP.
Feedback: Divinity Generation
While I think the original value was too slow and made combat too static,the current divinity generation is a bit too much.I can literally cast divine encounters after every at will.A single Blessings of Battle actually grants me 1 full pip plus about 25% of a second pip with Divine fortune.That almost defeats the purpose of building divinity.(Extra cheesy when combined with Divine break the spirit.Stuns,stuns everywhere!) I guess the sweet-spot would be a boost of 33-50% on the original,instead of 100%.That would mean you can cast a divine encounter after every other at-will,which sounds ideal taking under consideration the baseline ratio of at wills to encounters.
By the way,without responding to anyone in specific,I would like to give a few...."reminders":
-Soothing light has not changed.It still doesn't require a target to cast,you can cast it on yourself.The last update was to SEARING light,the encounter power.It added healing to it.
-Astral shield did not lose DR.On live it grants 24% DR.On preview it adds 30% DR.So,Normal version was buffed,if anything.This has been true for a couple of updates now.
-Cleanse does not have a 20 second ICD....It is 8 seconds.
Consider the Empowered is the new Divine Mode.. Do not compare the new divine mode with the current Divine mode. Because they serve totally different purpose.
Looking @ diogene's calculation.. Assuming that 2x Empowered is equal to 1 pip of the current Divine.. can you cast 2x Empowered 3 Times @ ptr as fast as we cast 3 pips of divine in live?
11 clerics out of 4000 players. That is 0.275%. There are more mages on page one (the top 20) than there are clerics in the top 4000! There is one player that has nearly twice the kills of all the clerics in the top 4000 eligible clerics combined.
Sometimes, numbers don't express in human relatable terms their meaning, so I am going to express this in a unitary way.
There are 7 classes, so in a perfectly balanced game the ratio for each class would be 1 in 7:
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for mages right now, it is a little bit better than this, but guardian fighters are greatly under-represented in neverwinter pvp, they show up maybe 1 in 15 or so:
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Maybe thats ok. But here is cleric, 1 in 363:
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This is conservative way to measure too: the actual ratio of total kills is much worse.
The question for the you is this: why should this be? Is there really any way to rationalize this? Do you think this objectively measured imbalance should be addressed? If not, why not? If so, well I am just going to say that in my personal opinion, the current changes are very very far from achieving a fair balance: there is something fundamentally misguided in the philosophy of clerics in pvp. Did someone get touched by a priest or something? Why do they have to be only punching bags?
I just generally dont like it.
There is something funny that will happen when we cast Astral Seal if we have Burning Guidance boon. I have it produced while having the faithful tree... The insane damage procced from Astral Seal + Burning Guidance mostly. Righteous spec may or may not boost the dmg, but I believe the root bug stems from feat interaction... If we spam Astral Seal multiple times to different targets while having at least 2 person near the DC (for Burning Guidance to activate), the bug will occur... During the bug, there will be many dmg floaters ever increasing both in procs & damage amount that it causes your PC to freeze
(Warning:This post contains feedback on what I feel the divinity gains should be, based on playing with the current divinity as well as theorycrafting. Feel free to skip if you are not interested.)
Actually,Im not comparing live's Divine Mode with Mimic's Divine Mode.You also can't compare live's Divine Mode with Mimic's Empowered Mode though.The correct comparison is class mechanic vs class mechanic.So,Effects added by divine mode on live vs Effects added by Divine mode on Mimic + Effects added by the generated stack of empowerment to the next encounter you use.With that in mind,comparing the benefit gained by expending 1 pip of divinity:
Live
Let's say you use Divine Divine glow.What this will add is:
Damage: ~1500 (this refers exclusively to the damage increase the divine version benefits from,compared to the normal one,not the overall damage of the encounter)
Healing: 0
Offensive boost: 15 %
Defensive boost: 0
Additional bonuses: None
Mimic
Damage: ~1500
Healing: ~1400
Offensive boost: 5%
Defensive boost: 5%
Additional bonuses: 1 Empowered stack
Now,this empowered stack provides flexibility,as you can use it on any encounter you want,to increase your own damage,your party's damage,to heal,to provide mitigation etc.In order to stay along the lines of benefits from Live's divine glow,let's assume we choose to expend this stack on break the spirit.Empowered break the spirit adds 10% damage to all party members per stack.Since we have 1 stack,that's 10% damage.This means that,adding this boost to the original 5% from divine divine glow nets us 1.1*1.05=1.155 or 15.5% damage boost.So overall benefit from 1 pip:
Live: 1.5k damage,15% damage boost
Mimic: 1.5k damage,1.4k healing, 15.5 % damage boost,5% defensive boost.
In other words,1 pip on live = 1 pip on Mimic (or rather,mimic's is stronger,but that's due to flexibility).
Because the "potency" of each pip remains the same,the rate of divinity generation should also be the same on Mimic as on live. Since encounter powers were the main divinity generator before,new at wills should,in theory,provide the same amount encounters did in the past,if not a bit more since old at wills were also generating a bit divinity,while new encounters now generate none.So we would get roughly 35-40% of a pip per cast,for an average at will such as astral seal.However,there's one disadvantage to the new system and that is all the extra button tapping.In order to use 3 pips for example,you would need:
Live: Tab-Encounter 1 -Encounter 2 -Encounter 3 -Tab (5 taps)
Mimic: Encounter 1 -Encounter 2 -Tab -Divine Encounter 1 -Divine Encounter 2 -Divine Encounter 3 -Tab -Encounter 3 (8 taps)
In other words,the additional taps required reduce the time available to use at-wills and that should be factored in,in divinity gains.Because of that,the "35-40% of a pip" divinity gains we started with, should be boosted by roughly 8/5 or 1.6 to offset the additional time spent on encounters.As a result,we should be getting around 56-64% of a pip per cast.This would allow us to use a divine encounter every other at-will,which also "feels" right,based on the time I have spent on Mimic.Divine encounters used at the same rate as at wills just doesn't quite do it for me,it's too much.
Again,this is just my opinion,it doesn't mean I'm right.There's way too many things to take under consideration,so my theory could be well off.It does however favor the 1 divine encounter for 2 at wills point I made,so...Im going with this for now :P
Thing is,you can't directly compare divine astral shield on live and empowered astral shield +1 divine encounter on mimic,because they work differently.On live,divine AS is a power that behaves the same under all circumstances.It will heal the same amount,at the same frequency.Empowered AS behaves differently though.It works MUCH better against multiple,small hits,but worse against fewer,large hits.
-If you get hit 10 times for 2.5k,you will lose 25k hp.
Live's version will heal 9-12k (depending on your healing) of that,leaving your allies missing around 15k hp .
Mimic's version with 1 Empowered stack with the stack being the result of,say,a divine healing word for extra tempHp,will absorb almost all that damage and leave your allies with about 2k missing hp.
-On the other hand,if the 25k hp loss is the result of one big hit from a boss,live's AS will still heal that ~10k hp,while Mimic's AS will barely absorb anything,leaving your allies missing over 20k hp.This is why in such a situation,you would adjust your divinity consumption in a way so that the divine encounters,combined with empowered encounters can provide enough protection from slow,hard hits,rather than a bunch of minor ones.
-Finally,if you put down a divine AS on live and noone gets hurt because everything dies before they can reach you,you just wasted a pip on live for nothing,while on Mimic,if you used it for something useful,you wouldnt waste it.
This is the main advantage of the new cleric,flexibility.If you try to play with the old mindset of "Ok,I'll do my rotation again" you will be ineffective.You need to adjust your casts to counter the specific situation you are in.You should be re-evaluating the battle before every rotation and react accordingly. This is also why I think DCs can still be hybrids.Except,this is no longer the result of feats,it's the result of your powers selection and divinity and Empowered stacks management.
Faster Animation Speeds
These animations need to be vastly sped up. There's no if's about it, they are downright slow. Divine Daunting Light is hurt by a 10% reduction on damage, and Empowered/Normal Daunting Light is incredibly hurt by the fact that the Area of Effect is small and the delay before it hits is astonishingly high. If anything, the Normal/Empowered Daunting Light should have a very, very slightly higher delay than say Indomitable Battle Strike considering the small area.
Prophecy of Doom is incredibly slow in all modes. This spell should be instant considering the damage is delayed for a period of time in Empowered/Normal casting. I can accept a small casting animation for Divine Mode as it causes instant damage, but it should really be 25%-50% of the current casting speed.
Searing Light is still going to be unused as it has poor damage and, again, the casting animation is not up to par compared to other damaging spells. Divine mode is horrendous in this regard while Empowered/Normal mode is still very lacking. I would suggest it having an equal speed to At Wills.
Lastly, if possible, Tabbing Divinity needs a much shorter lockout before using Divine/Normal abilities. This slight delay has become much more noticeable due to the current mechanics and at times feels like an extra hindrance.
Rework Heroic Feats
These still need to be worked on. Some of them are as easy as Copy/pasting current feats such as healing step and such, the others merely require editing simple values in the code. PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE THIS AS WE WOULD RATE THIS AS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY THAN ANYTHING ELSE.
Divine At-Wills and Divinity
This still needs to be looked at. Although Divinity gain is much more manageable this current patch, these Divine at-wills still leave much to be desired, especially since Divine Spells have no cooldown. I again suggest that these be allowed to be used to gain divinity, but at a 25-50% rate compared to normal at wills for balancing purposes. This would allow us the option for spot healing and minor damage, at the cost of a much slower divinity gain and delaying Divine/Empowered stack building and usage. I feel this would help streamline the class as a whole.
Show Cooldown Timers for Normal Encounters While in Divine Mode
A Quality of Life change. The Divine abilities need to show a Cooldown timer for the Normal/Empowered Abilities. I find it very life-threatening to try to juggle Divine abilities and Empowered abilities. There have been numerous times I've attempted an Empowered ability only to find that it is still on Cooldown, and I have little knowledge of the fact because I was using Divine mode.
Divine Glow: WAY too slow casting time. In Divine mode, the whole point of no cooldowns is to enable us to get empowered and get on with what we're doing, from what I understand. However, if you want to cast 3 divine DGs in a row, it takes so long it's not even worth it. Very disappointing.
Prophecy of Doom: Always been slow, always been pretty disappointing. Considering this is a paragon skill (and especially since you consider that Exaltation is the counterpart - a good clutch heal with some immunity), I always thought that this animation should be sped up or to give some immunity while you're standing there prophesying. Right?
Astral Shield: Slow animation as well, but maybe I'm just used to it. I always thought that people rely too much on blue circle, but I am a little disappointed with the new version. At least it still has mitigation! It also needs to be wayyy more clearly marked where you're laying it down, because if noone can see it, they can't use it.
Sunburst: Don't like it. Added KB to normal version, removed KB from divine version... Unnecessary IMO. Why not keep the normal and divine versions of sunburst, but add the HoT/DoT to the empowered one? There was no reason to change this, and it seems like the ONLY people who are happy about this are PvP only. I'd also be quite pleased with a stun/daze instead of KB, which works in PvE as well as PvP, and nobody will accuse devs of picking one over the other.
Searing Light: I'm actually really pleased with this. I always liked it, in theory, but it was situational and not really worth it most of the time. Now I think this can be the new Sunburst, a little AoE damage and heal. I'd like it even better if the animation was clearer about who you're hitting with it.
Capstone feats: I like them. I feel more powerful and I feel like I'm healing very well. I'm DEFINITELY healing myself better, which was always a big disappointment (my CW heals herself with lifesteal better than my cleric can with heals).
Divinity gain: I'm okay with only at-wills giving divinity how it is now. At first it was too slow, since Empowerment is the GOAL, you need to make sure you're not limited by Divinity.
I agree with Diogene... everything is painfully slow. You have to use divinity and you have to hit twice as many buttons as you used to. I play a cleric because I don't like button smashers. I like thinking about what I'm doing and knowing I'm making a difference... Empowerment is clunky and wasn't what we asked for. What would have been nice? More AoEs, but you took away a beloved power, Forgemaster's Flame. Now we can't have a decent amount of damage and a heal. We can't buff our parties as well as we used to be able to, since there's no Rising Hope or Linked Spirit, with Divine Glow changed to be not as powerful.
The fact that I need to use 3 rotations (normal, divine, empowered) to utilize my skills... speaks volumes. CWs have a whole extra encounter, GWFs go Hulk, and I get to learn three different versions of every skill, and I need to use them all in order to really make a difference.
Overall impression: Eh. I'll keep playing. \o/ It's a game.
Time will tell if this is just one big unintentional nerf.
Gain a lot less divinity when at-will is deflected.
Mod 12.5 PvP Power/Crit/Arp Optimization
Youtube channel (PvE/PvP)
At some point if you want to make the DC gameplay as fast as it is on live you're going to have to reduce casting time dramatically, but then we're going to run into major pvp balance issues, and the DC will play like a Street fighter II character. Not that I dislike this game but I don't see many people enjoying clickfests. Or you're going to make divinity mode spells significantly powerful but not strong enough to make empowerment seen as a nice side-effect - or you're going to buff these spells significantly and add cooldowns, but then the DC will be what rangers used to be, and many HR players didn't enjoy having to switch stances all the time.
So there's no solution without reverting some changes while keeping some of the good stuff:
- revert the divinity changes and keep what's on the live server: basically, better versions of normal spells with a shared CD. That's easy to track, you don't have to click 15 times a second to get to the desired effect, it's an instant effect and frankly well balanced on live.
- but: keep the empowerment mechanics. Change some of them, make them a nice small bonus. You keep empowerment, that's a small buff, your boss is happy because you didn't make engineers work for weeks on something we don't enjoy (yes that's important too
- keep the new feat trees but make them more hybrid. Add a bit of healing to righteous and some dmg buffs to virtuous and faithful.
That means reworking some spells and empowerment effects and adding some empowerment bonuses to divine mode but IMO that would be a much better compromise. If you do this please don't change divine astral shield and normal divine glow, keep the live server design, they're good spells and they're why other people want clerics in their parties.
It's a pretty nice compromise so that their work up to this point will not be in vain.. but we get to keep the old divine style. [ Everybody wins !! ].
Yes, 15 clicks a second is a necessary exaggeration..
Conclusion, i dont believe zerging the keyboard or a clickfest will make players enjoy playing their characters more.
Building on Diogene idea, empowerment stacks could be consumed by Divine At-Will. Each At-Will could have a different effect instead of just having the same Divine At-Will for all. When the number of orbs is zero, it could simply create one.
I feel on live that I don't use that much Divine At-Will. I presume it is going to be worse with the new mechanic having no CD on Divine Encounters.
The way i see it , u are ruining the Dc class which was really fun up until now as it was and only needed some medium to small buffs on damage and single target healing , and maybe abit more crowd control duration especially on break their spirit .
The only single target heal that existed u change it to Aoe . Yes i m talking about healing word ,which needed buffing ofcourse (9 k heal empowered is a joke when hitpoints in pvp go from 30k -40 ) , but as single target spell because every aoe spell need to be weak in order not to be overpowered . That spell was the only spell that gave me the feeling i have something to keep track and manage in order to save someone from death ( always have spare divine power , and cast it with good targeting in order not to miss and well timed ).
We also need + damage on all our spells , and Prophecy of doom need to be Prophesy of DOOM not just one of the useless spells we have in our ability catalogue .Should give A good dps Dot on top of debuff and really good damage if the target ends up living ( its one of the longer cooldown spells we have so it should be one of the most strong)
We really need to Choose when sunburst will knockback some1 and when not , or remove knockback completely .
We need to build divine power while mooving
Healing word Need to go back to single target with way more healing output so we have a really strong heal to save some1 from death and at least give him back arround 10 k Hps non critical , or even more ( u could consider extending cooldown on it , so its balanced )
What i read makes me wanna drop all my healing spells retrain for strenght and go dps with Forgemaster and break their spirit and get at last the doublekills and triplekills u deny all healers from and get my 10/10 domination.
Instead of making a healer class that works u are turning dc to either a Hybrid dps/ heal or an even more aoe focused regeneration spammer .
Excuse me for the length of the post , but after much trials and errors i managed to make my Dc viable and fun in Pvp . and suddenly instead of tweaks u are trying to fix something that wasn't broken , just underpowered .
P.s Dont touch divine mode it will ruin the class
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Shouldn't this say increased? Better yet, wouldn't increased be the wrong word to use there? "Improving casting speed to better facilitate the faster game play". Wouldn't reduced or a similar word fit better?
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The speed at which you activate powers has been increased. The casting times have been shortened. Those things are largely interchangeable as far as nomenclature goes.
TL;DR MORE POWERS FASTER GO!
Yeah, this is what I thought you meant on my first read and then the question started making me read it backwards (or as "casting time" rather than "casting speed") and I got vaguely confused.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Crush,
These changes look awesome! However with ALL the recent buffs to all classes, seems like we are back to PRE-Tenacity damage values (as a % of HP).
Would you PLEASE consider a quick re-visit to tenacity?
I would think that an easy avenue could be merely doubling the damage effect of tenacity.
BASE values would still be all -10% to damage,crit,control. Each 1% of tenacity stat (meaning around +100 tenacity for example) would provide -2% damage -1% crit damage and -1% Control (up from 1%/1%/1%).
At the end of the day, it would only REALLY be about an 8-10% decrease in damage across the board for MOST PVPERs, but I feel this is REALLY needed as damage values are crazy!
Are there going to be any other DC changes for this week's patch though? I know that you are busy with the updates to all the classes and that DCs have been getting big changes every week so far,so it's understandable to receive a bit less focus for once.However, there's quite a few bugs left and it would be nice to have them fixed by release.This is the second to last update and if they are all left for the last week,there's a chance they might make it to Live too...
Also,any news on the possible decrease to the stamina cost of our Dodge? Seems like we are gonna need it pretty badly... :P
I like this developer.
I like you, developer.
1) Heroic Feats Rework
- Replace/Rework all those pathetic feats (Domain Synergy, Templar's Domain, Initiate of Faith etc.)
- Put something stamina related (Healing Step)
2) Class Feature Rework
- Prophetic Action: very unreliable, close to useless atm
- Anointed holy Symbol: very little temp HP
- Soothe: no one uses it
- Holy Fervor: should include healing too
Bug:
Gain less divinity when at-will is deflected
Mod 12.5 PvP Power/Crit/Arp Optimization
Youtube channel (PvE/PvP)
- FF which is mostly used to heal the party during boss fights now does not heal (what is a single target slow good for a DC?! bosses cannot be slowed down anyway).
- gaining divinity with at-wills only? How many times I find myself running trying to build some divinity casting encounters ... well now I am forced to stand still spamming at-wills while I have no CC immunity and only two dodges. I will just kneel and pray to all the gods in the universe for a miraculous kill
- sunburst... KB is just a party killer rly nobody usually wants KBs in party content
- now I will be forced to use BoH to feel a little like a healer (and I hate that skill)
- while I like the change in divine chains (3x cast) I do not like the shorter controll effect (divine mode should be stronger not weaker)
- please rework heroic feats... half of them are pretty much useless and you know it well
foundry Call of the Blood - NW-DTAK6CXZ2
campaign Heart of Nature - NWS-DUKNH9PPZ
Look, some of it will include some things that are brutally honest. I will ignore the squealing from other players.
Feedback: This is the world's biggest nerf. Nothing that you give me counters the loss of Linked Spirit. Being able to buff myself from 6k power to 8-11k power and then cast a daily or an encounter is not matched by anything done in the rework of feats. I could tolerate Empowered and everything else except for the loss of this party-based feat. This isn't a selfish thing since I get zero from it in solo play. But if I want to contribute anything meaning full in Endgame content and BIS set parties, Linked Spirit was the only way.
People tell me to be cheerful, because base damage has been increased. Okay, all those people should go watch BIS CW clear Draco solo. No new "Mod 5" cleric is going to be posting those videos, so now even BIS clerics can expect to be excluded from CN parties.
And getting over my tears (I have a CW), let's talk about who all these changes really hurt. The green level, starting their first character, DC players. Who will hit their first group content dungeon, Cloak Tower, with an Encounter they can't use. Because you don't have Divinity or Empowered at that point. The abuse that such players are likely to receive on their second day of content should make them quit the game. And if this game can't attract new players, it will die.
And this has to do with a lot of the changes that have been proposed. My current Endgame Cleric could survive anything but the loss of LS and maybe the Regen on AS. But I am a Founder and I ran content during Beta on level as both a CW and a DC. Which means green gear, no enchants, no Perfect Weapon Enchants, etc. Even using the cheapest gear on the AH you'd need hundreds of thousands of AD to run above content. This is Pirate King. FULL GREEN. A DOG COMPANION.
None of the reworks are going to keep me rolling a DC and out DPSing most other players with a Perfect and Rank 9s in PVE dungeons. Heck, my HR in an average level 40 pvp blue gear and Rank 9s triple out DPS everyone in full T1 gear and rank 5s in Idris. Not being able to hit Karrandax with a regen AS and not hitting CT with a non-KB Sunburst hurts NEW PLAYERS only. My level 15 character DCs will KILL with a single Sunburst.
So I am making a plea to revisit your ideas FOR THEIR SAKES ONLY.
Okay, on to what it all really changes. And that is the effect of DCs in PvP in below 60 content. It's a Dirty Little Secret that 95% of the people flaunting Dominion Champion Titles earned them below 60. Same way you used to earn Head Hunter. (Yes, Dear Reader, I OFC exclude YOU.) And Clerics who earn them do so using Punishing Light and Guardian of the Faith Daily. Seriously. And what does the all of the Divinity changes and the loss of gaining Divinity from Encounter CDs mean? It will be much, much harder to use Punishing Light below 60 to earn Triple Kills. Which only encourages GS creep against Green Newbies.
So I am at Point 1. A TR or a GW or a CW or a GF or a GWF is at the other end of the map. We charge to meet at Point 2. The enemy CW suffers no penalty. The enemy TR, GWF, or GF can expect full respective meters when the reach Point 2. I can't even spec to a potential and planned recharge based on Encounter CDs. I must luck roll. This is a PUNISHMENT for rolling a DC and going into PvP. Even in GG, it's a punishment.
And I like class differentiation. So if you don't want to revisit, a 2-slide DC, consider buffing HP instead to bring us towards the more armored classes and make casual PvP-ing easier.
And while we are on the subject of punishment, why have the DC trait lines have a cost to capstone v.s. every other class I run? You can have a better boost but it costs something? What? What?
You don't punish any other class that I can see by charging them a cost to cap their Feat Line. Though, TBH, my secret DC build (which I didn't publish following the complete nerf of my non-DPS GF) never took a Cap as it was. Though Agent of Faith was a 2 second CD reduction and gave me Sunburst at less than 7 seconds.
But as I have said, you annoy me. As a Whale, with a credit card, you irritate me. And I did refuse to pay once.
But if you can't continue to recruit new players, which is the secret of WOW. This game will die.
Suggestions: PvP players, hardcore or GG need a way to regenerate Divinty outside flagging people with Astral Seal. I've played GG since it started and let's be serious. You are PENALIZING new players only. Especially with the new "walls" in T1 and you know what I mean.
With the release of new Artifact weapons, please either UNBIND drops in VT or MC, or make them far more constant. My 15k GS characters who aren't CWs are having a hard time gearing because of these constraints. I have run MC since it release some 700-800 times and had 6 drops. 5 GF sheilds not on my GF and 1 CW off hand on my CLERIC. Considering the AD cost on the AH for components..."